


In the Stars, Worlds Away

by thecryoftheseagulls



Series: Caylina Shepard [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, F/M, I don't really know how to tag this yet, Pining, and evolving tags, because ME2, evolving plot, fairly canonical (I think), lots of angry Shepard, whoa there will be lots of angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-13 06:15:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2140239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecryoftheseagulls/pseuds/thecryoftheseagulls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is, in theory, to be a complete story about Commander Caylina Shepard (colonist, sole survivor, paragade) and her journey to save the galaxy thrice over. Begins after the Battle of the Citadel, so at the start of ME2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

In Anderson’s office, Caylina Shepard crosses her arms over her chest, her posture obstinate.

“Joker says the Normandy’s going to need a few more days for repairs,” she tells the newly minted Councillor before her. “And seeing as there’s not much for me to do here – you know I’m shit at this publicity stuff, Anderson – I’ve booked passage on a merchant ship from here to the Shinto system. ‘Bout time I paid my respects to Chief Williams’ family. I owe her that.” It's a little strange, proposing her own vacation times, and Shepard can't help but expect an objection of some kind. But she did just save the whole fucking galaxy, and she's a Spectre now, which means a certain amount of autonomy. The chain of command is ingrained in her so deep after all these years that she still has a hard time wrapping her head around the benefits of Spectre status. 

“You’ll get no argument from me, Shepard. Lord knows you’ve earned some shore leave," Anderson says reasonably. Shepard shifts, blinks. Well. That was easy.

“I’ll only be gone a few days. Then you and the Council or Hackett can send me on whatever mission you’ve got planned next.” Shepard eyes Anderson with some suspicion, the justification slipping out because she feels vaguely, inexplicably guilty at leaving the Citadel in its current state of chaos from the battle. But she is useless here, she wasn't lying about that. Give her a gun and a mission and she'll kick whoever's ass needs kicking; ask her to pick the pieces up afterwards and well, you're fucking out of luck. 

Anderson holds out his hand for Shepard to shake, says, “Take your time, Shepard. You already saved the galaxy once. No need to come rushing back to save it again.” 

Shepard hehs and takes his hand. “Right, well take care of yourself, Councillor.” She emphasizes his new title just enough to make him squirm, and then smirks her way out the door. 

****

Down at the docks, Shepard hoists a small pack on her back with the essentials for a short trip. She’s left her armor and most of her weapons aboard the Normandy, now dressed in civvies with her pistol strapped to her hip. It’s strange, not packing the extent of what she owns with her wherever she goes (though, to be fair, that’s only like three bags of gear). The Normandy has become something of a home to her these past months, which is a first. She’d never settled down anywhere after Mindoir, preferring to squat in temporary lodgings every time she had shore leave. A home to her means family, means some place you can come back to and be with those you love, and, well. She’s been a loner for a long time now. 

The Normandy has changed that for her, but the ship has been awfully empty these past few days – Garrus has gone back to helping out C-Sec with all the clean-up necessary after Saren’s attack, and Liara has already headed back to Ilos, anxious to see if she can learn anything from Vigil before it goes completely dead (if it hasn’t already). Everyone else has been keeping busy with repairs on the Normandy or the Citadel while Shepard nursed bruised ribs and a few other minor injuries in her cabin on the doctor's orders, making occasional public appearances for the newsvids. Mostly she's been sending out letters to all the families of the humans who were lost following her orders to rescue the Destiny Ascension, something she felt was necessary, taking responsibility for those losses, assuring the families that they were not in vain. The names of the eight ships they lost are burned into her brain, seared up there with the list of people she’s lost over the years. Like Ash. It’s for her, she supposes, as much as for Ash’s mother and sisters, this pilgrimage to the empty grave she knows they have put up in her friend’s honor. Maybe it will flush some of the grief she feels for so many dead from her system. It’s a futile hope, ultimately. She doesn’t forget the dead, doesn’t ever really stop grieving, and you’d think it would be easier, losing people she cares about now that she’s lost so damn many, but it isn’t. Each new loss is a fresh blow, another scar she carries. Sometimes she wonders how much of herself is actually left under all the names of the dead written on her soul. Occasionally she does something right – stopping Saren, saving the Council, putting Anderson on the Council, these were good things – but they don’t negate the weight of her failures around her neck like a millstone. She should be celebrating a hard-won victory, but in all the downtime in the week since what they are calling the Battle of the Citadel, the only thing Shepard has been able to feel is hollow. There wasn’t time, before, to mourn Ash and Wrex, but now their losses are foremost in her mind, and Shepard is afraid, so very afraid, that it wasn’t enough, that soon the Reapers will come storming back into the galaxy. She’s only stopped one of them. There are more out there, waiting in the shadows, biding their time. 

“Not trying to sneak off without saying goodbye are you, Shepard?” Kaidan’s voice startles her and she turns to find him standing a few feet away, with a half-grin tipping up the corner of his mouth. 

“Kaidan!” Shepard smoothes her hands down her thighs and her gaze snags on the duffel bag he’s got thrown over one shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m coming with you,” he says, like it should be obvious, closing the distance between them with a few quick steps. “Now, before you object, Shepard, remember Ash was my friend too. And I’m the reason she’s dead. I should be there to pay my respects.” 

His matter-of-fact tone sends a pang through Shepard’s chest. She puts a hand on his arm. “It wasn’t your fault, Kaidan. It was my decision, my call. I’m the one who left her behind.” 

“But you wouldn’t have had to do that if you hadn’t had to save my ass, would you?” His smile is tight. Shepard sighs. “I want to be there for this, Shepard.”

The captain of the ship she’s commissioned appears from the airlock behind them. Shepard jerks her hand off Kaidan’s arm and puts some distance between them, hoping the motion looks discreet. 

“Everything’s ready for you, Commander. Should be setting off here any minute now.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Shepard says. She thumbs the strap of the bag on her shoulder and starts towards the ship, casting a glance over her shoulder to where Kaidan still stands, just…watching her. “You coming, Alenko?” 

He smiles, just barely, and follows. 

****

It’s a simple vessel – shared crew quarters for everyone, most of the space inside the ship being taken up by the various cargo bays. The captain says they ship whatever will bring them a profit, and with the chaos on the Citadel, basics like foodstuffs and medical supplies will go for a fortune if he can just bring them back from some of the human colonies. It works in Shepard’s favor, stuck as she is without the Normandy, since the colony of Amaterasu where Ash’s family lives is a mostly agricultural planet. _Like Mindoir_ she thinks briefly, but pushes the thought away. They’ll be there by midday tomorrow.

She and Kaidan claim a couple of bunks in the crew quarters and then retreat to the small starboard lounge so they aren’t in anyone’s way. This marks the first time they've really been alone together since the night before Ilos. Shepard thinks of the near-panic she’d felt, ordering Joker in after the Destiny Ascension during the battle, how she’d looked up at the sky and thought _You keep that ship safe, Joker. You keep_ him _safe_. She’d left Kaidan out of her squad for this mission because Garrus was her partner on every mission, and she needed Liara for her Prothean knowledge and her biotics; but more than that, she’d left Kaidan aboard the Normandy because it was fucking safer there, because she didn’t trust herself not to rend the heaven and earth in a battle just to see him safe. She cursed herself for that weakness – they were soldiers dammit – but the truth was the thought of losing him fucking terrified her. And what had he said? “I swear, though, if anything happens to you…” He hadn’t finished the thought, but she hadn’t needed him to. She felt the same. 

But Kaidan had also said, “This can’t change anything.” Shepard wanted to respect that, respect his wish to stay with the Normandy and its crew, but there had been that little voice in her head whispering _It’s too late._ So she’d kept her distance, ignored the way Kaidan’s face broke with relief when he came to see her in the Dr. Michel’s clinic after the battle, the way he had clenched his hands at his side to keep from touching her. She’d wanted to kick everyone else from the room, grab him and lose herself in those whiskey eyes, fuck him until the reality of their victory became real and tangible. But it was over, really over, and that meant there would be consequences again, regs that still applied, careers to think of. Shepard was so damn tired of pretending she didn’t need him. She’d buried herself in reports and letters of condolences and he’d been off – helping someone, somewhere, like a good soldier. 

And now they’re…here. Aboard a strange ship, just the two of them, on their way to Ash’s grave. Shepard settles around a table in the lounge and Kaidan sits down across from her. He sets folded hands on the table and looks around. She notes the way he shifts forward, wonders if the slight hunch and locked fingers is a defensive posture, tries to think of something to say. Casual, but not too casual. That would be best. Just a couple of soldiers and friends, that’s how they should appear to everyone aboard ship. He licks his lips and turns his gaze back to her, and shit. She's been staring at him, hasn't she.

“Joker told me,” Kaidan says abruptly. “That you were going to take a few days, go see Ash's family. He seemed to think you could use the company.”

“Did he?” Shepard arches a brow. “Should have figured that one.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going?” Kaidan’s tone sharpens, his dark brows coming together. 

“I…” 

Fuck. She can’t really say, ‘I’ve been avoiding you because I don’t trust myself not to jump you in front of anyone watching, because I’m shitty at acting like I don’t want you and if I look at you too long I might blurt out that I’m in love with you and ruin everything.’ 

“…didn’t want to bother you. I know you’ve been keeping busy, and it’s going to be a quick trip, just a few days. This…it’s just something I told myself I’d do when I got the chance. Now seemed as good a time as any.”

Kaidan frowns. “You don’t have to be alone in this, Caylina.” Shepard starts and stares at him at the use of her first name. It’s the first time he’s called her anything but Shepard or Commander. He reaches across the table, takes her hand. “I know you blame yourself for Ash’s death, but it wasn’t just your fault. I mean, if we weren’t – I can’t pretend things would have gone down the same way if things were different between us.”

Shepard hates the way guilt clouds his face and knows the guilt she feels is big enough for the both of them. She falls back on the same refrain she’s been using since the briefing after Virmire. 

“I made a decision, Kaidan, as the commanding officer. That doesn’t fall back on you. It was my choice, and it was tactically sound. If I had left you there facing Saren and all those geth alone, you would never have been able to prime the bomb on your own. I knew when I sent Ash in with the Salarians what the cost might be. It didn’t change what had to be done.” It’s a lie, one she’s told through her teeth time and again, but it’s close enough to the truth that she hopes he won’t see through her. He doesn’t need the burden of knowing exactly how unsound her judgment is when it comes to him. She knows she would have made the same decision had she thought it through properly, but that doesn’t change the fact that she didn’t think it through, that she rushed back to his side on pure instinct and rage with no thought for the mission. The memory of him collapsing just as she burst out the doors into the sunlight still sends a stab of panic through her.

“Come on, Shepard. You mean to tell me that you were thinking only about the mission and getting that bomb to go off, nothing else?” 

She clenches her fists, forgetting that Kaidan still has his fingers in hers. Kaidan flinches. 

“Maybe I was!” she retorts, knowing the death grip she has on his hand calls her a liar. 

“I’m not blaming you. If there was a way we could have saved Ash, it’s on both of us that we didn’t.” He runs his thumb across her knuckles and Shepard can’t take the tenderness of the contact. She pulls away.

“Fuck, Kaidan, what do you want me to say? Do I regret what happened? Every damn day. But I go over and over Virmire in my head and I don’t see how any of it could have gone down differently.” 

Kaidan watches her for a moment, his eyes soft around the edges but keen on her face. He notices everything, damn him.

“Maybe not. It doesn’t change the fact that we both lost a good friend that day, and you shouldn’t have to do this alone. You deserve better than that, Shepard, even if you don’t think so.”

She swallows, scratches at the hair on the back of her skull where she knows it’s less likely to be disturbed from her bun (something she does when she’s frustrated rather than run her fingers through her hair and upset it completely). A few strands of hair come loose and Kaidan’s gaze is warm and steady on her face.

“You’re not going to make this easy, are you.” She glances away and looks back to find him laughing at her. 

“Me?” his eyes sparkle. “You’re the one that’s been avoiding me ever since the battle, Caylina.” Shepard crosses her arms over her chest and glares at him. 

“I thought that’s what you wanted. I’ve been trying not to fuck everything up for the both of us. We’re lucky enough our insubordination saved the galaxy. We don’t need broken regs on top of everything else.” Shepard bites her lip, avoiding his gaze. If she looks at him he'll see the statement for what it is, a lie.

“Maybe I want to break some regs, for once. That night before Ilos – I can’t get it out of my head. I can’t get _you_ out of my head. I don’t think there are any easy answers here, but…” Kaidan shakes his head and Shepard is digging her hands into the table’s edge and trying to look as fucking normal as possible, but the way he sighs and looks at her with such open desire makes any pretense at nonchalance impossible. 

“But what?” she says, and her voice is a snarl, and fuck it all when did she start sounding so goddamn needy?

“I can’t stand the thought of letting you slip through my fingers, Shepard, and if that means facing the consequences of being with you, then so be it.” There’s a set to his jaw that Shepard recognizes as his stubborn face, the face he makes when he’s going to stick by his guns like the man of honor he is. She isn’t conscious of the decision to get up or launch herself at his face, but suddenly she’s sitting on the edge of the table in front of him, her hands fisted in his shirt and her tongue in his mouth, and Kaidan is pressed in between her legs, his hands running up and down her body. He groans out her name and she pulls back from his mouth to kiss up the side of his jaw, bites at his earlobe, growls,

“You _asshole_. Why the hell didn’t you just say that before? You overthinking, over-cautious asshole. God.”

Kaidan noses under her chin, gives a throaty chuckle that sends shivers through her, and kisses her throat. 

“I wanted to be sure you weren’t avoiding me because you regretted asking me to stay that night.”

Shepard grips his hair, rakes his scalp with her blunt fingernails. “Fuck you, Alenko. I was the one asking, not the one saying that whatever we did shouldn’t change anything.”

He hums, kisses her collarbone, rubs his thumb across her clothed breast. 

“Forget what I said then. I was an idiot to pretend I could work beside you and not want you. You’re everything.”

“Now you tell me,” she gasps and can’t help the smirk that creeps onto her lips. Kaidan straightens to look her in the eye, and she winds her legs around his waist, thumbs the cleft in his chin, says hoarsely, “If you want me, I’m yours, Kaidan. I think about going back to a life without you and it breaks me. I need you so goddamn much.”

He wraps his arms around her and kisses her, swipes his tongue against her lips and into the corner of her mouth, and then it’s just the sweet pressure of his lips on hers and both their hands running over each other’s bodies and under each other’s clothes like they’re teenagers making out for the first time in the back of a car. Shepard doesn’t think about anything else, doesn’t care that they might be discovered like this, forgets for once the presence of the dead, because right now she has Kaidan, and that’s enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan is a tease. That is all.

At first, Shepard thinks it will be a welcome relief to share quarters with the crew and Kaidan. It’s been a struggle, having a captain’s cabin to herself on the Normandy. She saw Anderson everywhere in the room initially, had a hard time making the space her own. And then there was the _silence_. Life aboard a ship was never silent, not completely, but Shepard has spent years – almost half her lifetime – in barracks of one kind or another, listening to the snoring and the breathing and shifting of her fellow soldiers. Privacy is a foreign concept. She had a hard time sleeping without that ambient noise when she first claimed the captain’s cabin, so the idea of not being alone at night again is actually something that she looks forward to. 

Shepard’s enthusiasm quickly turns sour. It’s not the noise or the mental pressure of so many other bodies in the room that gets to her. No, it’s Kaidan, dressed in a plain white t-shirt and ancient looking gray sweatpants in the bunk next to hers, the smile he gives her over some book he’s reading on his omni-tool when she comes back from the women’s showers. She perches on the edge of her bunk, shoulders hunched in, fingers digging into the mattress and tries to pretend she’s not casually staring at him. Kaidan glances up after a moment, gives her a ridiculously warm smile, and winks. Fuck his gorgeous face. Shepard huffs and throws herself back onto her mattress in a motion that’s meant to look moody, but is undermined by the hard _thwack_ of her head against the upper bunk. 

“Fuuck,” she groans, touching the back of her head gingerly. Kaidan shifts, his voice drifting over to her.

“Shepard?” He sounds concerned. 

“’m fine, damn you,” she mutters, rolling onto her side and curling around her pillow. She hears quiet snickering from Kaidan’s bunk and debates throwing the pillow at him, but no, that would deprive her of said pillow. Also they’re not supposed to be flirting in front of all these strangers coming and going and pretending not to stare at the famed first human Spectre and her companion. Shepard grunts irritably and kicks the blankets down so that she can slip under them. 

Gradually, the crew finishes with their nightly rituals and settles into their bunks. Shepard watches Kaidan a bit more surreptitiously now that she’s in the semi-privacy of her bunk, and he knows it. He doesn’t look over at her directly, but he reaches up to massage the back of his neck casually, fingers scritching at his amp, the motion deliberately slow. He licks his lips, draws his lower lip in under his teeth, flicks to the next page of whatever he’s reading. His thumb comes up to run along the edge of his jaw – not scratch, not really, because that would be too obviously fucking normal. Shepard swallows, tries not to think of her lips where his thumb is earlier, those hands on her skin when they were interrupted, barely managing to separate to a casual distance in the time between the warning swish of the door opening and the emergence of the curious off-duty crew members. They’d spent the rest of the evening fielding questions about the battle and their pursuit of Saren, the perils they had faced along the way. Shepard had spun stories of Matriarch Benezia and her Asari commandoes with ease, keeping her hand on Kaidan’s thigh under the table. She was pretty sure their flushed skin and untidy hair had given them away the moment the crew had entered the room, anyways. 

Kaidan shifts back to rubbing at his neck, up his throat and down, fingers scratching along his collarbone, tugging at the collar of his t-shirt. He licks his lips again and Shepard growls. She flops over onto her other side, putting her back to him. There’s a low chuckle at her back, taunting her, but Shepard ignores him, tugging the blankets up to her chin. The last light in the room is turned off and soon the glow of Kaidan’s omni-tool disappears as well. 

Shepard closes her eyes, tries to relax into the now-darkness. 

…and finds herself hyperaware of Kaidan’s nearness. He’s within hand’s reach, really - if she were to roll over slightly and stretch her arm across the space between them she could touch him, run her hand down his arm, slip her fingers into his. _Goddamn it, Shepard. Hold it together._ She huffs. _Think about…I don’t know, rachni or something. Possessed commandoes, that kind of thing._ She makes a face in the dark at the mental image conjured of that dead asari with the rachni queen’s voice echoing from her gaping mouth on Noveria. _Fan-fucking-tastic, Shepard, that’s what you should be thinking about. Great thoughts to have before sleep._

Shepard opts for another tactic, concentrating instead on her breathing. She inhales deeply, lets out the breath slowly. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. She relaxes slightly into the mattress as she shuts out everything but the air in her lungs. It works for a while, but eventually her concentration frays. The sounds of the people around her become louder in her ears – some quiet whispers drift towards her from the far end of the room, and the woman above her (Sara, she’d said her name was) shifts, the bunk creaking. Next to her, she hears Kaidan’s blankets rustle. There’s a sigh, and dammit, how can she tell just from the sound that it’s Kaidan sighing, a full-throated exhale that she can picture working its way out of his chest in one long motion? She hears rustling from him again and then nothing. The whispers in the distance fade. Shepard is alert, straining against the silence and the darkness to hear something, anything from Kaidan. She pictures his always-tidy hair ruffled by contact with the pillow already, tries not to think of him half-covered in a sheet that morning only a week ago, when Joker had summoned her to the bridge and Kaidan was still there naked in her bed. Silence, only the hum of the ship’s engine and the quiet snoring from a few of the crew. 

Shepard grits her teeth, flings the blankets back and pads out of the room. There’ s no fucking way she’s going to be able to sleep like this, with him so close and so many strangers to keep her from him. She wanders back to the starboard lounge, waves the lights back off when they turn on automatically as she enters. There’s a water dispenser by the door, and Shepard collects a glassful and goes to stand in front of the full-length window on the far wall to watch the stars speed by. She sighs. There was a time, and it wasn’t very long ago, when she was independent, self-sufficient. Needed no one but her weapons and her orders and someone she trusted well enough to watch her back. She’s become this other person since shoving Kaidan out of the way of that beacon on Eden Prime, since his understated concern when she woke up and the vehemence with which he had clung to his grief over Jenkins. Shepard had been so damn tired back then. Nothing touched the elusive Shepard, survivor of Akuze and Mindoir, not her rising fame or the attempts of all the teams she was assigned to after Akuze to get close to her, not the loss of yet another soldier. But Kaidan had. She still wasn’t quite sure how he managed it, managed to make her vulnerable and needy and so fucking weak. She wanted him so bad it made her sick. She was safer, before, when she was alone. Maybe she hadn’t felt so much, but it was easier, not needing anyone else. Because what happens when she lets people in is always, invariably the same. She loses them, to fucking Batarians or geth or thresher maws, to all the shitty ways this universe can find to kill the people she loves. It will happen again, she knows it, and yet…and yet. She can’t quite bring herself to care, this time. “You make me feel human,” he’d said, that night they’d spent together and fuck him for stealing her line, because she had forgotten what it felt like to be alive and human and real until she knew what it was to crave his body and his eyes and his laugh. She sighs, shoves her knuckles into her forehead and tries, by god does she try, to put him from her mind. 

“Caylina,” Kaidan breathes by her ear and she twitches, reaching automatically for the gun she’s not carrying. She didn’t even hear him come in. “Easy, easy,” he says in that voice of his, his fingers curling around her elbow to steady her. 

She exhales shakily. “Kaidan.”

“Just me,” he says, and she sags back against his chest, his arm coming to wrap around her waist. He kisses the side of her throat. “You okay?”

She grunts, reaches back to thread her fingers in the hair at the back of his head. 

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Hm.” Kaidan holds her silently for a long time, his nose buried in her hair. Finally he turns her in his arms, hooks his arms around her sides and rests his forehead on hers. “Something you wanna talk about?” 

Shepard shakes her head. She cups his chin in one hand and presses a kiss to his lips, gently at first, and when Kaidan pulls her closer she deepens it. She sighs. 

“Maybe I just fucking want you in my bed, not the bed next to mine, Alenko.”

He butts his forehead into hers gently. “You’re not the only one, darlin’.”

She bites her lip, and moves her hand to the back of his neck to hold him there, says with a groan, “I’m a fucking catastrophe, Kaidan, a hormonal teenager who can’t stand not to touch you. Damn you. This is what you do to me.” 

He gives that throaty chuckle for the fucking third time today and draws her closer, if that’s possible. “I like it.” He kisses her ear. “You’re cute when you’re needy.”

She growls, turns her head to capture his lips with hers, lets him go only to grind out, “I am _not_ cute. That’s Commander Shepard to you, Lieutenant, first human Spectre, savior of the fucking Citadel. I don’t do _cute_.”

“I beg to differ, _Commander_ ,” he says, tangling his fingers in the hair at the back of her skull so that he can draw her head back and kiss her throat. She makes a grumbling noise in said throat and Kaidan kisses up to her chin. “You’re sexy as hell and cute, Shepard. They’re not mutually exclusive.”

“Whatever,” she mutters stubbornly, sticking out her jaw slightly. “Just don’t go spreading it around or my reputation will be completely blown to shit.” 

He snorts, draws her lips back to his again. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Shut up,” she says to the smirk on his lips. 

**** 

They stay that way for a long time, idly running their hands over each other, kissing slowly, mapping each other in the half-dark, until they’re sitting in front of the observation window, Shepard sideways in Kaidan’s lap. She settles eventually against his chest, legs looped over his, head under his chin. Kaidan brushes her hair back from her face, says,

“We should probably get back, Shepard.”

She grumbles, wraps one hand obstinately around his arm and tangles the other in his shirt. 

“Mm-mm. Nope. Not moving.” 

Kaidan grins; she can feel it in the way his jaw moves against the top of her head. “Okay,” he says softly, without argument. He scoots them back so that he can lean up against the couch facing the window, wraps his arms around her more securely when she snuggles in closer to his chest. Shepard finally falls asleep to his hand stroking slowly down her hair.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan and Shepard arrive at Amaterasu and go to visit Ash's grave with her family. Shepard has angsty flashbacks to other graves.

When they dock at Amaterasu, Ash’s family is waiting. Most of them, anyways – Lynn is offworld, but Mrs. Williams and her other daughters Abby and Sarah greet Shepard and Kaidan warmly. 

“It’s an honor to meet you, ma’am,” Shepard says to the matronly woman with Ash’s dark hair. She holds out her hand formally, but the other woman brushes it aside and pulls Shepard in for a hug.

“None of that, my dear.” Mrs. Williams wraps her arms around Shepard and squeezes tightly for a long moment. “I know how fond of you my girl was. How fond of both of you.” She releases Shepard only to nab Kaidan in the same bear-hug, and Shepard can’t help but think how much more natural the embrace looks on him. He loosens, snugs his arms around her ample waist and pats her back gently. Shepard is sure she looked like a board in comparison, stiff and awkward and unyielding. She’s not used to being hugged by people’s mothers. Or mothers in general.

At Mrs. Williams side, Sarah is hovering, watching Kaidan with wide-eyed awe. Ash’s mom lets him go, steps back enough to hold him by the shoulders and says, with a twinkle in her eyes,

“Well, you said the Lieutenant here was cute, Sarah, but I think you rather understated how handsome he is.”

“Mom!” Sarah says sharply, looking mortified, while her sister sniggers. Kaidan turns ruby-red and smiles sheepishly.

“Er…thank you, ma’am.”

Shepard chuckles, remembers that tail-end of a vid she’d once walked in on. Sarah’s voice on a recording had said, “Oh before I go. We saw Kaidan in a newsvid about the Normandy. He’s cuuute.” Ash had made a face when she’d turned around to find Shepard standing there.

“Let’s just pretend this never happened,” Ash had said sheepishly.

Shepard smiles faintly at the memory. Mrs. Williams turns to Shepard and Kaidan both to say,

“We’ve all heard so much about the two of you. It’s so nice to finally meet you both. You didn’t have to ship all the way out here to visit little old us.”

“Seemed like the right thing to do, ma’am. I know how close Ash was with her family,” Shepard says.

The pleasant smile on Mrs. Williams face slips, her eyes growing sad. “She was a good girl, our Ash. But I expect you’ll be wanting to see her first, won’t you? She and her father aren’t far from here.”

The Williams lead them to the skycar parked just outside the unloading area of the docks. It’s a spacious six-seater. Shepard climbs in the front with Mrs. Williams and Kaidan sits in the back with the two sisters. 

“Terrible business, this attack on the Citadel,” Mrs. Williams says as she drives. “We’ve been getting all kinds of wild reports out here. Frankly I’m surprised the two of you could get away. It sounds awful, just awful, what the poor people there have been through.”

“Citadel’s in pretty bad shape after getting turned into a war zone, that’s true.” Shepard puts her hands on her knees and sits at attention. “But to be honest, ma’am, there wasn’t a whole lot for a couple of old soldiers like Lieutenant Alenko and myself to do. And a visit to pay our respects is long overdue.”

Ashley’s mother hmms, and in the backseat Shepard can hear Abby asking Kaidan if it’s true that a rogue Spectre was responsible for the attacks on Eden Prime and the Citadel. Out the window, Shepard can see the packed white dirt roads and stately mature trees of Amaterasu (the trees are some species closely related to the beech trees of earth, she thinks). The settlement is small – standard pre-assembled colonist homes intermingle with wood-shingled houses that look no more than twenty years old. They leave the town behind quickly and the landscape turns to old woods broken by occasional clear-cut farmland. They’re passing a dairy farm with what are clearly native bovines of some sort – they have shaggy brown pelts and are nearly twice the size of an average earth cow – when Mrs. Williams says,

“Well, we’re glad you did, that’s certain.”

They turn down a side road and now Shepard can see the cemetery ahead, curving up and over a relatively steep hill that’s been cleared of trees and planted with something like cheat grass that’s a particularly dark blue-green color. The tombstones are sparse, set at quite a distance to each other, and look like they’re made from local stone. 

Mrs. Williams parks the car at the top of the hill.

“She’s this way, dear.”

Shepard swallows around the sudden lump in her throat, pausing just outside the car before she follows. Kaidan comes to stand beside her. He touches the small of her back briefly, gives her a smile that doesn’t touch the shared sorrow in his eyes.

Mrs. Williams leads them to two tombstones on the crest of the hill, at the far side of the cemetery from the road. The larger one is labelled "Serviceman Robert Williams. Beloved husband and father.” At the bottom is an inscription that reads, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Psalm 23:6.” Next to it is a two or three foot evergreen (a particular species Shepard hasn’t seen before) and at the tree’s feet is a small plaque of stone.

“In memory of Gunnery Chief Ashley Madeline Williams (2158-2183), killed in action. ‘That which we are, we are; one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will: to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’”

Ash’s sisters stop behind Shepard and Kaidan, and Abby says, “Wasn’t a body to bury. So we planted a tree instead.”

“An always green one, too, to watch over Dad.” Sarah adds. “Figured Ash would like that.”

Mrs. Williams doesn’t say anything, but Shepard can see the tears in her eyes, threatening to spill out over her cheeks. The graves are well-tended – there’s a heart-shaped arrangement of mostly fresh flowers laid on the ground between them. As she watches, Abby steps forward and pulls away the wilted ones, replacing them with some daisies she’s brought from the car.

“Hey Ash, Dad,” Abby says softly. “Look who’s come to visit you.”

Shepard inhales sharply as Abby steps back, the sound wet and ragged like a stifled sob in her throat, and for a moment it’s too much. The fields and the open sky and the small-town feel of this place are all around her, and the air is hushed and reverent like it is in every graveyard she’s ever visited, as if the birds themselves don’t dare sing too loudly here for respect for the dead. In her mind Amaterasu fades, is replaced by a place she’s only been back to once in all these years, acres of white tombstones under a sky with two moons, so many graves and all the same. And rows and rows into the center are nine identical tombstones with the last name Shepard and the same date of death. Then it’s Akuze, another place she’s returned to only one time, with its miles and miles of sunbaked red sand – sand that took the blood spilled there into itself, like it was made to cover over sins – and there’s a giant statue with three figures on it. Shepard’s likeness is there, and at her back are the figures of a colonist and a soldier, and there are more than fifty names carved into the circular base. Shepard almost loses it then.

But she has a code – one visit each for every person she loses, one time to stand at their grave and pay her respects and wonder why she’s still alive when so many others are dead. Shepard pulls herself back from the edge by sheer willpower and is grateful to find no one is looking at her (except Kaidan, at her side, just outside her peripherals). Her hands are shaking. 

“Howdy there, Chief,” Shepard says, breaking the silence. She ignores the way her voice comes out hoarse and broken, goes on, “Alenko and I figured it was about time we paid your sorry ass a visit. Bet you thought we’d forgotten about you and were going to leave you in peace, but no such luck.” Kaidan gives a broken laugh as Shepard kneels in the prickly blue-green grass and runs her fingers lightly over Ash’s gravestone. Her voice drops lower. “We got him, Chief. We stopped Saren, saved the galaxy and all that. Turns out it was all much bigger than just Saren, but people will be safe, for now. And we couldn’t have done it without you, Ash.” 

Ash’s voice in her headset on Virmire flashes in Shepard’s ear. “You know it’s the right choice, LT,” she’d said, her voice wet and ragged and fierce. Shepard flinches, feels Kaidan’s hand come to rest on her shoulder. She swallows hard, says, “I don’t know if there’s anything waiting for us after all this, Ash, but for your sake I hope you were right, and you’re looking down on us right now from someplace better. You deserve that.”

“Commander’s right, Ash,” Kaidan says at her side. “If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be standing here today. So thank you. I’m going to do good with this chance you gave me, I can promise you that.”

There’s silence for a long while until Shepard stands slowly. She glances at Serviceman Williams’s grave, turns to Mrs. Williams and says,

“Ash told me, once, how she – how she used to record herself reading ‘Ulysses’ for her dad every time he would ship out, and how she would come read it to his grave every time she was home.”

“That’s true,” Mrs. Williams says, giving a smile around the tears in her eyes. 

“If it’s all right by you, ma’am, I’d like to do the same.”

“You know Tennyson?” Abby asks.

“Reckon I’ve read it enough times these past few weeks to know it by heart,” Shepard answers, taking in stride the looks of surprise everyone is giving her, even Kaidan. 

“By all means, Commander,” Mrs. Williams says, arching a brow but smiling faintly.

Shepard nods, takes a breath, starts in with the first stanza. She loses herself in the words slipping from her tongue, finds herself again only to swallow thickly against the tears she does not cry, and forces the hardest of the lines from her mouth.

“I cannot rest from travel: I will drink life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those that loved me, and alone.” 

“I am become a name; for always roaming with a hungry heart; much have I seen and known; cities of men and manners, climates, councils, governments, myself not least, but honour'd of them all; and drunk delight of battle with my peers, far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.”

“Death closes all.” Shepard stops speaking for a long time and Kaidan slips his hand around hers, holds it tightly even though Ash’s family is watching and Shepard manages to continue. “But something ere the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done, not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.”

“For my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die.”

“Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” 

Silence meets the last lines of the last stanza, swallows the words of the long-dead poet into itself. The last phrase, the one written on Ash’s grave, seems to echo, perhaps just in Shepard’s mind. Kaidan brushes his thumb over the back of her hand, and Shepard throws her shoulders back, swallows and stares off into the middle distance until she is certain she will not cry and her voice will no longer shake. 

“That was beautiful, Commander,” Abby says, and Shepard looks around to find that everyone else, Kaidan included, is crying. She tries to smile, fails miserably.

“Thank you,” Shepard says, her eyes going back to Ash’s tree.

“You two have done her proud, you know that?” Mrs. Williams reaches over, pulls Shepard into another hug. “Bless you, Shepard.” She holds out an arm for Kaidan and hugs him too. This time Shepard relaxes into the hug, smells the homemade lavender soap on Ash’s mom’s skin, and thinks of her own mother, lost so long ago, who smelled like dirt and jasmine and warmth. She blinks rapidly and steps away before she can break down completely, patting Ash’s mom on the arm awkwardly.

For her part, Mrs. Williams doesn’t look offended. She releases Kaidan and looks between Kaidan and Shepard to say, “Now, you’re coming to dinner at our house, you hear? I won’t let it be said that my Ash’s friends went hungry while there was plenty of good food in my pantry.”

Shepard gives a shattered laugh and nods.

“We wouldn’t miss it, ma’am,” Kaidan says for them both.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner with the Williams family, featuring Kaidan being domestic and Shepard being, predictably, on edge. I'm so sorry it has taken me so long to update, everyone! Hopefully I'll be settling in and posting more regularly now. This is the first fic of length I've attempted, so it's a bit of a learning curve for me.

The Williams home is on the outskirts of town, a comfortably large farmhouse set back from the main road by a long, tree-lined driveway. They’re clearly not farmers themselves, although they have a lot of land. Shepard notices the chicken coop off a ways from the house, and there are several goats free-ranging about, along with a larger hairless triped creature Shepard doesn’t recognize. Some kind of native pack animal? It looks – vaguely – like an earth camel. 

More immediately noticeable are the two dogs that set upon everyone as soon as they exit the sky car, one a black lab mix and the other a golden retriever. They don’t bark, just bounce around excitedly from person to person. Kaidan’s whole face lights up; he kneels in the white dirt before any of the Williams have a chance to shoo the dogs off.

“Hey there,” he says softly to the lab. “Well, aren’t you a beautiful girl. Look at you!” He ruffles the fur behind her ears and grins widely when the dog responds by wagging her tail and slobbering up the whole side of Kaidan’s face. 

Abby chuckles. “That’s Sally,” she tells Kaidan.

“Hiya, Sally,” Kaidan says, holding out a hand for the dog to sniff and then lick enthusiastically.

“And the other one – wherever she went – that’s Russet,” Abby supplies. Mrs. Williams and Sarah watch, smiling faintly, and Shepard looks down to find the retriever sitting at her feet, watching her expectantly and wiggling her tail through the dust.

“I think she likes you, Commander,” Sarah says.

Shepard swallows past the sudden lump in her chest. 

“Been a long time since I’ve seen a dog up close and personal,” Shepard says, quietly enough that she hopes no one hears her. The image that flashes into her head of exactly the last time is one of bloodied fur and Delilah’s whimper through broken jaws. Mindoir. Shepard pushes the thought away and feels nauseated. She squats in front of the retriever and says carefully, “Hello, Russet.” She lets the retriever sniff her fingers before she reaches out a tentative hand to pet the dog. Russet barks, just the once, and then is pressing up against Shepard’s calves and wiggling a back leg furiously when Shepard scratches behind her ears.

There are bootsteps behind Shepard and Russet looks up with big brown eyes and scampers away. When Shepard glances behind her, she finds Kaidan looking disappointed.

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Sarah says, punching him in the arm lightly and grinning. “Nothing personal. Russet just doesn’t really like men.”

“I see,” Kaidan says. Shepard starts to straighten and Kaidan offers her his hand. “And please, call me Kaidan,” he adds when Shepard is standing by his side.

“And Shepard for me,” she says. “Even my subordinates only call me ‘Commander’ half the time.” Shepard gets the feeling her statement goes mostly on deaf ears as Sarah smiles dreamily at Kaidan.

But Mrs. Williams says, “Perfect. Of course we will. Now, no need to dawdle outside. Come in, come in.” She shoos the young people into the house.

Off the entryway, it’s a couple steps up into the open living area, dining table dividing the living room from the kitchen. The furniture is worn, as is perhaps expected out in the colonies, but comfortable looking. Everything has a log-cabin sort of feel, wood furniture covered in homemade cushions. 

“Please, make yourselves at home. I’ve got a roast and some vegetables on in the slow-cooker which I imagine will be ready any minute now, so all that’s left is to whip up some biscuits and dinner will be ready,” Ash’s mom says, turning for the kitchen.

“Can I be of assistance at all?” Kaidan asks, and Shepard stifles her own urge to offer the same. 

“Oh, no, no. Sit. Talk.” Mrs. Williams waves a hand.

“It’s no trouble,” Kaidan says, ignoring this to follow her into the kitchen. 

“Well, aren’t you the gentleman? I won’t turn down help, if you insist. But you three stay put,” she says, beaming at Kaidan and then turning a stern eye on Ash’s sisters and Shepard. “No need for more than two cooks in the kitchen.” Shepard knows an order when she sees one. She sits down on the couch, and hears Kaidan say,

“Oh, I don’t know about that, ma’am. I’ve lived on ships for a long time now. How do you know you’re not the one doing me a favor letting me at this fully-stocked kitchen of yours?”

Mrs. Williams chuckles and then Shepard loses track of their conversation as Sarah sits down beside her and asks the same question her mom did on the earlier drive.

“So. You two are coming from the Citadel, right? What’s it like? We’ve been watching the newsvids, but I bet that hardly covers it.”

Shepard sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “It’ll take years to repair all the damage. Could’ve been worse, but it’s still pretty bad. The Wards got hit real bad in some places. Luckily the Keepers are already at work helping the restoration efforts, but still…it’s a mess.”

“I’m sure,” Abby says quietly from where she’s settled in a nearby rocking chair. Shepard gets distracted briefly be trying to pin down the type of wood it’s made of, and then hears Sarah ask,

“…true that you gave the order to save that Asari dreadnought?”

“Yes,” Shepard says.

“Some people aren’t too happy about that,” Abby comments.

“With the way the Council handled this Reaper problem, I’m not sure that I blame them,” Shepard says. “But there were 10,000 people on that ship. Civilians. It wasn’t just about the Council.”

The sisters exchange a glance and Shepard wonders tiredly if they share Ash’s politics – not xenophobic, really, but mistrustful of the Council and aliens in general. Ash was of the persuasion that human interests come first – Shepard remembers a conversation about whether or not it was wise to have so many aliens in her crew when the Normandy was such an experimental prototype. And at the Citadel…a lot of good humans died to save a lot of aliens, on Shepard’s orders. _Shenyang. Emden. Jakarta. Cairo. Seoul. Cape Town. Warsaw. Madrid._ Those were the ships. Shepard could recite the number of crewmen lost aboard each by heart. 

“Well. At least we’ve got a human on the Council now,” Abby says.

“Mm.” Shepard nods, vaguely relieved this is all that’s said. “Anybody deserves that title, it’s Anderson.” She feels a sharp burst of pride in her chest. That part she knows she got right.

The sisters make noises of agreement and start discussing Anderson’s merits around her. Shepard’s gaze slips to the kitchen, where she can see Kaidan flattening out dough with a rolling pin as Mrs. Williams stirs something in the crock pot behind him. Jacket removed and hung over a chair and sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his dress blues are covered in flour, but he doesn’t seem to care. He laughs at something Ash’s mom says and wipes the back of a hand against his cheek, leaving a trail of flour. The picture is so goddamn domestic and relaxed and… _happy_ …that Shepard sighs. Kaidan looks up to find her eyes on him and he smiles warmly, holding her gaze over the dough in his hands before Mrs. Williams asks him a question and he turns to answer her. 

Around her, Abby and Sarah have fallen silent. Shepard’s brain stutters for a moment as she registers the quiet and casts about for something to say.

“So! Abby. Ash told me you were into archery, if I’m not mistaken?” 

Abby’s face lights up. “She told you that?”

“Oh, here we go.” Sarah rolls her eyes. Shepard nods.

“I am, yeah! It’s kind of a…hobby of mine. Well, more than a hobby. I hunt – local deer, mostly. Well, they’re closer to okapi. But you probably don’t know what that is.”

“You kill things…with arrows?” Shepard blinks in surprise.

“Sure!” Abby says enthusiastically. “I make my own bows even. And arrows. Do you want to see some?”

Shepard grins a little. “All right,” she agrees. “That is actually…one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard.” 

“I’ve got my best bows hanging up down in the family room,” Abby says, rising. “Come on. I’ll show you.” Sarah groans, loudly, but moves to follow them as well.

A vibrant discussion about what types of wood from which planets make the best bows later (with Abby surprised to find that Shepard knows the names and a few properties of each type Abby mentions), Mrs. Williams calls down the stairs to say that dinner is ready.

“You know a lot about this, Shepard,” Abby says as the three of them emerge back into the main living space. 

“I know a few things,” Shepard says with a shrug. 

“We should shoot sometime! I bet you’d like it.”

Shepard chuckles. “I know a few things, kid, which does _not_ mean I know anything about archery. Now, if you wanted to shoot _guns_ , there, I could help you.”

“Don’t listen to Shepard,” Kaidan says, setting out the last plate on the table. “She’s a crack shot with almost any firearm. Even beats out Vakarian with a rifle most days. She’d be a natural.”

“I can best Garrus any day, thank you, Alenko.” Shepard raises an eyebrow and smirks at him. “Doesn’t mean I’d have the faintest idea what to do with a bow and arrow in my hands.”

“She’s right. The mechanics are completely different,” Abby says, sliding into a chair. “Sure, I mean, there’s similarities in technique, breathing, the fact that you’re shooting sharp objects at things. But with a bow – there’s an elegance there, a simplicity that you’re lacking with a gun.”

Shepard snorts. “I like the elegance of a clean headshot just fine.” She folds her napkin over her lap after she sits down.

Across from her, Kaidan snickers. “Careful, if you get her waxing poetic about sniping, we’ll be here for hours. Should hear when she and Vakarian get going.”

Shepard gives him a pointed look. “Oh, like you and I never have long discussions about tech.” Kaidan just smiles.

“That’s the turian who was part of your crew, right Shepard?” Sarah asks.

“Yeah. My right hand man, excepting Alenko here.” 

Sarah looks like she’s about to ask another question when Mrs. Williams interrupts with a gently insistent, “Shall we say grace?”

The girls bow their heads and close their eyes, hands folded in their laps, and after a moment Kaidan and Shepard follow suit.

At the head of the table, Mrs. Williams says, “Father, we thank you for the food you’ve put on our table today, and for the blessing of good friends to share it with. We thank you for Ash, Lord, for bringing us all together, and praise you that she’s at your side today. Bless this food to our bodies. In your name we pray, amen.”

“Amen,” Abby and Sarah murmur, and Shepard hears a quiet echo of the word from Kaidan as well. Then Mrs. Williams is calling for everyone’s plates and doling out a hearty roast with cooked carrots and bits of potato, and the silence devolves into the clatter of utensils and the passing of plates. When everyone is dished and the bowl of biscuits is being passed around, Mrs. Wiliams says amicably,

“Now, I want to hear all about the two of you. Tell me about your families.” She glances at Shepard first and Shepard nearly drops the biscuit in her hand back into the bowl.

“Um. No family to speak of.” Shepard clears her throat and feels suddenly very antsy. Like now might be a good time to bail. She doesn’t really need dinner, does she?

“None at all?” Mrs. Williams asks, shooting her a look of mixed surprise and pity. 

“No ma’am,” Shepard says in the firm commander’s tone she reserves for moving a conversation along, but finds herself adding, “My family’s been gone a long time now. On the technical side I’ve got an aunt I’ve never met back on earth somewhere. She cut off contact with my mother before I was born. We don’t associate. Reckon the Alliance is the closest thing I’ve got to a family.” She feels Kaidan’s eyes on her at this, and risks a quick glance at him to gauge his reaction. The expression on his face is impossible to read. 

“And what about you, Kaidan?” Mrs. Williams asks.

“Well, I hail from Vancouver, ma’am,” he says offering Ash’s mom a smile when the attention turns to him. “Only child, but my dad was in the Alliance, which is why I joined up.”

“Oh! Vancouver. My Robert was stationed there for a few years. Lovely place. The girls must have been…well, I think Ash was eight? Somewhere about there.”

Shepards quiets as the conversation steers towards Kaidan and Mrs. Williams’ favorite places in Vancouver, and Kaidan talks about his dad’s family’s orchard and growing up on earth. She watches him, the animation in his face and the warmth in his whiskey eyes as he talks about _home_ with such affection. Shepard wonders what that’s like, to feel such a strong connection to a home you can go back to. It’s been a lot of years since she gave up on that as something she could have. It’s not home if the only things you have to come back to are an empty house and a row of graves. Still, she could listen to Kaidan talk about his life all day…particularly as long as she doesn’t have to talk about hers.

Of course, that’s just wishful thinking, and it’s quickly shattered when Mrs. Williams turns her attention back to Shepard to ask, “And what about you, dear? Where’s home to you?”

“I was born on Mindoir,” Shepard says, deliberate in her leaving out of the word ‘home.’

“Now, that’s one place we haven’t lived. One of the few, I’m sure, with all the moving around we’ve done. Right girls?”

“With the large number of human colonies today,” Sarah chimes in, “we’ve actually only lived on a small percentage. Even if we have moved around more often than most.”

Shepard gets the feeling that Sarah is one of those mathematical, particular types that take issue with generalizations. She smirks.

“Military families, you know,” Mrs. Williams says with a shrug. “Any military service in your family, Shepard?”

Shepard shakes her head. “My parents were farmers.”

“Now that surprises me. Someone with as brilliant a career as you – you’d think it would run in the family. These things tend to,” Mrs. Williams muses.

“I suppose I was just motivated to surv- …succeed, ma’am.” Shepard pokes at a potato on her plate. 

The conversation goes on like that for a while – Kaidan offering simple, open answers to queries about his life and Shepard giving up as little information as she can possibly manage. It proves difficult, with the kind curiosity of Mrs. Williams and both her daughters. Eventually Shepard admits that Amaterasu reminds her of Mindoir (‘but with more trees”), and confesses that she survived the Batarian slaver attack of 2170 (which earns her quiet ‘ahs’ of understanding and pitying glances which make her stomach turn). She manages to avoid the inevitable Akuze conversation, which she chalks up to all the newsvids blasting her as “Commander Shepard, Savior of the Citadel, survivor of Akuze!” For once, she finds herself thankful for the overly invasive nature of reporters. 

Gradually, Shepard notices that Kaidan is contributing less and less to the conversation. She glances over to find his face looking pale and drawn, darks brows drawn together in almost a grimace. She reaches across the table to lay a hand over his. 

“Kaidan?” she asks softly. “Migraine?”

He smiles at her, tight-lipped, and gives a nod that barely moves his head but still causes him to wince.

“I should…probably be getting back to the hotel,” he says when the conversation stalls and everyone is looking at him. 

“I can drive you back into town,” Sarah offers, giving Kaidan a look of concern which is echoed on her mother’s face.

“Thank you,” Kaidan says simply. “It would be best if I lie down for a while. Thank you for the meal, Mrs. Williams.”

“My pleasure, dear. You do what you have to.”

Shepard shifts, retracting her hand from Kaidan’s and feeling on edge. “I’ll come with,” she says. This raises a loud outcry from all quarters. 

“No, really, it’s no trouble. Not like this town is real big. It’s a two minute drive, Shepard, really,” Sarah says. 

“Oh you don’t have to do that,” Abby says. 

And Kaidan, “No, it’s okay, Commander. Stay. Enjoy the evening.” His forehead is tight and honestly she wants to go with him to ease it as much as anything. Which is stupid. There’s not much to be done for those but wait them out, Chakwas has told her on several occasions. Still, she feels…almost panicky. Kaidan is leaving, is going, and she’s going to be here alone with Ash’s family, and they’re wonderful, they are, but they ask too many questions about her past, questions she can’t face, questions she’s actually giving answers to for once in her life. And that, more than anything, how deep and quick this warm colonist family has gotten under her skin and broken down walls carefully and methodically constructed over years of isolation – that’s what fucking terrifies her. Give her a charging Krogan, hell, even a squad of Asari commandoes, over this kind of…innocent interrogation any day. 

Shepard glances back to Ash’s mom and sisters and feels a twinge. _I’m doing this for Ash_ , she reminds herself. _Least I can do is stick around to spend some extra time with her family. I owe her that._

“Well, all right,” she says, settling back in her chair and giving Kaidan one last glance, a cross between a plea and honest concern. “If you’re sure, Kaidan.”

“I’m sure, Shepard. I’ll be fine,” he says, and that’s that.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard goes back to the hotel and has a guilt-fest over her feelings for Kaidan in view of Ash's death, and then ofc they have sex. It should be noted that this scene is unabashedly inspired by a TVD scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXbXNCKEYak) because said scene is super sexy, although I've obviously changed a lot of the elements to fit this story.
> 
> Oh, and the poem that Shepard quotes is "Happiness" by Jane Kenyon.

The hotel is really more of a bed and breakfast in a surprisingly well-crafted three-story Victorian style home. The town is too small for there to be a cab service, so Abby drives Shepard there a few hours after Sarah dropped Kaidan off. It’s late, the planet’s moon a half-crescent in the sky. Shepard pauses with her bag over her shoulder once she’s waved Abby off in the skycar to appreciate the view of the stars that a small-town planetside offers. Her breath fogs in the evening air, turned chilly.

Inside, Shepard approaches the woman at the front desk. 

“Good evening!” The silver-haired lady sets down a mug of tea and stands from her stool.

“Evening,” Shepard says. “Um, reservation for Commander Shepard, please.”

She suddenly remembers that she had only made the one reservation, and it was a reservation that hadn’t included Kaidan’s name. She hadn’t anticipated his coming with. _He probably had to take his own room_ , she thinks. _I wonder if I can get a key. I should at least check on him. See how his migraine is. Will have to ask which room is his._

This line of thinking is interrupted when the woman says, “Right. Room 301. Here’s your key. And if you’ll just sign here…” She flicks a projection of a signature page onto the desk from her ‘tool and Shepard signs her name with a finger. “Perfect,” the woman says. “Enjoy your stay, Commander. Breakfast’s in the dining room at seven, or you can ring down for a tray if you like.”

“Thank you.” Shepard grips the edge of the desk with one hand before she gets up the nerve to ask, “My friend, he got here a couple of hours ago…”

“Yes, Lieutenant Alenko checked in and got a key to the room. I haven’t seen him again tonight. Looked like he was in pain, the poor man.” 

Shepard does her best to mask the surprise on her face. “ _The_ room? My room? Oh. Good. Uh.” She pauses and then, to cover the slip, offers, “He gets migraines.”

“I thought as much,” the woman – Kate, her nametag reads – says. “My sister used to get really bad ones. She’d have the same look on her face when they were starting that your young man had.”

 _Your young man._ Shepard isn’t prepared for the rush of guilt and elation that hits her at those words. She feels a bit giddy.

“Right. I should go check on him,” she says, twisting the key in her hands.

“Of course. Let me know if there’s anything I can get for the two of you before I lock up, dear. I’ll be around for another hour or so.”

Shepard mumbles a thank-you and climbs the winding stairs to her – their – room. It’s dark when she enters and she makes an effort to be as quiet as possible. The room is simple: double bed, small table to the side under one window, door to the bathroom on her left. There’s a holo-clock reflecting onto the ceiling from a bedside table, and by its blue light she can see Kaidan on his back in the bed, still fully clothed. His chest moves up and down slowly. Asleep, then. That’s good. Shepard takes her bag and disappears into the bathroom to take a hot shower and think over the evening’s events. 

It had been…not as bad as she was expecting, being alone with Ash’s family. They’d started swapping stories of the Chief, Shepard warm in her retelling of their first meeting - Ash in that pink armor, the last of her squad on Eden Prime to survive. That was the first thing they’d bonded over, their respective losses of their entire squads, though Shepard doesn’t mention this to the Williams. Mrs. Williams had chimed in with stories of a young Ashley, rambunctious and tough and always taking care of her sisters when their father wasn’t around. And eventually there had been old photographs shared between omni-tools, each with a story, and there had been laughter and even some tears – though not, of course, from Shepard. 

She feels…warm…at the memory, as if in sharing the Ash she had known with her family, Shepard had finally done something right by Williams. It didn’t erase the guilt, not by any stretch of the imagination, but…it did dull the sharp knife of shame that Shepard felt in her gut whenever she thought about Virmire. 

Shepard steps out of the shower and towels off. She has known so much death in her life - some days she thinks she could bear it if she was numb to it, if each new death was simply more weight on her back rather than a blade in her side, sharp, painful, raw, new each time. For a while after Akuze it had been like that, nothing touching her. She’d gone through the motions in a haze, the perfect soldier, shore leaves filled with booze and sex with whatever stranger caught her eye. The days and nights had blurred together, and, _jesus_ , it had been such a relief not to feel anything, grief or happiness, to just exist. 

Shepard pulls on briefs and a pajama top she doesn’t bother to button, finds a bottle of local wine labelled ‘Complimentary’ on the counter. She takes the bottle and a glass to the table, pours some, sits down. A slight tug pulls the curtains back just enough so she can see the stars. 

And then…then there was Kaidan, ruining all her best laid plans with the sincerity of those whiskey eyes and the mellifluous gravel of his voice, his shoulders in his uniform, the ridiculous amounts of pomade she knows he puts in his hair to tame it. And Shepard…Shepard didn’t fuck her subordinates or her teammates, never anyone she might have to make life or death calls around, only strangers, people she never had to see again. But she’d fucked Kaidan. Ash was dead because Shepard couldn’t stomach the thought of living in a world without Kaidan, because the world had color again around him. But the vividness he brought to her life came rife with the pain all over again, so much pain she’d thought she had successfully drowned out, left behind, buried. It all came screaming back like it never left. Dead family. Dead squad. Dead first love. Dead colonists. Dead marines. Dead. Dead. Everyone she'd ever cared about dead. And then there was Shepard the soldier, with her code and her orders, except they weren’t enough anymore, because around Kaidan she was weak and devoid of all her walls and her precious rules. 

Because, ultimately, Shepard was selfish, and no matter how much the guilt over that choice on Virmire threatened to smother her at times, Shepard knew – she _knew_ there wasn’t a part of her that would hesitate to make that choice over again. Sure, loving Kaidan hurt like hell, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you could step back from. Walls break once. She wouldn’t – couldn’t – go back to the greyness. That selfishness, that self-preservation, that was what was unforgivable. And this trip…this trip was about penance as much as anything. She could not be forgiven, she knew that, but maybe she could…make _some_ amends. 

Shepard downs the rest of the wine her glass in a gulp and pours herself more, her jaw clenching. 

****

Kaidan wakes to the sound of a soft sigh, surprised he was able to fall asleep at all. His migraine seems to be retreating – the pressure behind his eyes is definitely lessened. He opens them, finds it doesn’t hurt to turn his head towards the sigh.

Shepard is sitting at the table in the dark, silhouetted against the yellow light of a street lamp coming in through the window. She’s got a wine glass in her right hand, held loosely by the stem, which she seems to be studying with the same intensity with which she cleans her weapons. Her long brown hair is down for once, wet about her shoulders, and she’s wearing some sort of silky black night-shirt with all the buttons undone to reveal the hard brown planes of her stomach. And not much else. Kaidan feels his breath catch. Trust Shepard to be almost more sexy half-clothed than she is naked. It’s unusual to catch her with her hair down like this, both literally and figuratively. His eyes roam over the lines of her body, one leg crossed over the other, muscle and curves and lethal grace. She is beautiful.

He sees her throw back all the wine in her glass and then clench her jaw, and once she has poured more for herself, she glances over at him and finds him watching her. She doesn’t frown or smile, simply fixes her bright blue stare on him and tilts her head, appraising him, studying him, laying him bare. She stands, sets her glass on the table and crosses to the bed, stretching out beside him. 

“Hi,” he whispers. Shepard tucks an arm under her head and matches his tone.

“How you feeling, Kaidan?”

“Better,” he says. “How was your evening?”

“Good. It was good.”

Kaidan nods slightly, letting the silence stretch between them. There’s something she’s not saying – he can see it in the way she fixes her eyes on his face, a quiet kind of desperation there. But she doesn’t speak. 

“This afternoon…” he says softly, after a while. “I didn’t know you liked poetry.” He watches the corners of her lips tip up.

“I do,” she says. “What did you think Ash and I talked about over at the gun bench all the time?”

“Um. Guns?” he chuckles. 

“Oh, she was good. Didn’t want it spread around to ruin her reputation. I guess that means she succeeded.” Shepard smiles. “She was big on Tennyson and all those Romantic poets. A few Victorian ones too. Me, I prefer late 20th century poetry.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

Shepard twists her head. “Jane Kenyon? Adelaide Rich? Jack Gilbert? Jane Kenyon’s my personal favorite. I used to read her as a kid.” She fixes her eyes on the ceiling, her right hand dropping into the space between their bodies. Kaidan runs the tips of his fingers down the back of her hand, the touch feather-light, until she turns her palm over and lets him lace their fingers together. She inhales softly. 

“It turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away,” she whispers, and there’s a lilt to her voice, one he hadn’t heard before she was quoting “Ulysses” today on the hill. Kaidan strokes his thumb over hers.

Suddenly Shepard is straddling his hips, long hair flowing over her shoulders and her black shirt slipping to the side to reveal one naked breast. She tugs their joined hands over his head and runs her left hand up his clothed chest until it’s resting on his shoulder. 

“And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone.”

She murmurs the words, slowly rocking her hips to the rhythm of the poetry, and there is a wet gleam to her blue eyes, but she does not cry. Kaidan reaches for her with the hand she’s not holding, brushes her hair behind her ear, cups her cheek. She swallows, moves to nuzzle and kiss at his palm, and then she continues,

“No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door until he finds you asleep midafternoon as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair.”

She stumbles over the word ‘despair’ and then she’s bending over, letting go of his hand to clutch at his face, dragging her lips against his and kissing him with desperation and force and need. 

“ _Shepard_ ,” he groans, tangling his fingers in her hair. When she pulls back enough for him to see her, she’s still not crying, but she’s looking at him like she’s drowning and only he can save her. “That was beautiful,” he says, and it’s inadequate, woefully inadequate. “Shit. _You’re_ beautiful.” He shifts under her, aware of the weight of her body on his hips, the strain of his cock against his pants. Shepard combs her fingers through his hair, traces the shape of his dark eyebrows, strokes a finger down his cheek and then over to trace his lip scars, and he waits for the full look in her eyes to spill out in words. 

“Kaidan,” she finally groans. “Fuck. I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve any of this. But I can’t stop wanting you. You saved me, Kaidan. I was so lost until you saw me. I look at you and all I can think about is Ash, but I can’t change what I did. I can’t take it back. I don’t want to. Please…tell me I’m not crazy for wanting you.”

He can see it there, the guilt she’s been denying all these weeks, the fear, even the relief in the twist of her mouth at finally saying it. And he can’t fix anything, damn it, can’t change the past or bring Ash back or make it hurt less. Hell, he lies awake at night thinking of Shepard’s mouth, her body under his hands, but it’s always Ash’s voice in his ear – _You_ know _it’s the right choice, LT_ , she says, and he wants to scream _No, it’s not, it’s really not, don’t sacrifice her just for me, Shepard, I love you but I can’t –_

And that’s it, really, isn’t it? He’s in love with this woman, his Commander, and there won’t ever be a day when he doesn’t remember the cost of that love, but Ash’s death doesn’t change what he feels, and it can’t be undone. 

“You’re not crazy,” he says hoarsely, and it’s done. “I think…I think I’m in love with you, Caylina. And maybe this is wrong, but I don’t care. I don’t. We came so close to the end of life as we know it. I don’t want to waste the life we just bought ourselves. You make me feel…god, I’ve never felt so alive as I do when I’m with you.” 

She drops her forehead against his, whispers, “I’ve been alone for so long, Kaidan. I don’t want to be alone anymore.” 

“I know.” He grips at her naked waist, under her shirt. Shepard kisses him, sucks his top lip into her mouth and drags her tongue down the scar there, and then she’s pulling back, fingers tugging at the buttons of his shirt. 

“Fuck me, Kaidan,” she says, and it sounds like a command but her eyes are begging. 

Then it’s clothes tugged quickly from bodies, Shepard’s hands undressing him swiftly, and Kaidan flips them so he’s on top. He would have covered her with kisses from her forehead to her toes had Shepard not sank her blunt nails into his back and begged him until he stopped and fucked her as hard as she wanted him to. She drags her nails down his skin and hooks her legs around his waist and moves under him to meet each of his deep thrusts. Kaidan runs his hands over her breasts, pinches her clit between his fingers, rough because her eyes are wild and hot with desperation and there’s no resisting the way she slams her hips into his and rocks against him and moans, his name a quiet cry in her mouth. 

When she comes, Kaidan is just behind, gives himself over to the way she tightens around him, buries his face in her neck and bites her shoulder when he climaxes. She’s silent and almost distant as he pulls off her, except she’s wrapped her hands around his wrists so tightly that it’s almost painful. He folds her to him and now, when it’s done, kisses her eyes and the scar on her cheek and her throat, hands roaming over her body gently. She curls in towards him at the tenderness in his touch, throws her arms around him and buries her face in the thick dark hair on his chest. 

“We’ll make it work, Shepard,” he murmurs. “We’ll find a way to make it work. I’m not going to be able to walk away from you.” 

Shepard doesn’t say anything, just nods repeatedly against his skin and clings to him. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard and Kaidan's last night visiting Ash's family. There is smut ofc :D

The arrow Shepard has just shot hits the ground four feet away from the target.

“Oookay. Freaky knowledge of the various wood genera aside, you really weren’t lying when you said you’d be terrible at this.” Abby smirks.

Shepard laughs. “Tell you a secret if you show me how it’s done?” She holds out the yew bow in her hands to Ash’s sister.

“You’re on, Shepard.” As Abby nocks an arrow to the bow, Shepard spares a glance to the opposite side of the Williams’ backyard, where Sarah and Kaidan are throwing sticks for the dogs. Sarah’s laughter is loud and infectious, and there’s a big grin on Kaidan’s face which makes Shepard feel warm inside, but neither of those things are what draws her gaze. No, it’s the way Sarah stands beside him, the periodic too-bright smile she turns up her chin to give him, the casual way she runs her hand down his arm.

Shepard clasps her hands together behind her back and falls into an automatic parade’s rest stance as she tears her gaze away. Abby lets fly the arrow and it hits the target dead center. 

“So. Secret.” Abby picks out another arrow from the bin at her side.

“Right. Before I joined the Alliance, I wanted to be a botanist.”

“The famous Commander Shepard wanted to study plants? Wow, Shepard. I would not have guessed that one.” Abby’s second arrow lands half an inch from the first. 

“Yeah. Well. When you’re a colonist kid whose family relies on a good crop to get them through the year, plants take on an added significance, I guess. I had this cousin who went back to earth to study agricultural science for a while, and I guess he inspired me.”

A third arrow hits the target’s center.

“So what changed your mind?” Abby asks, lowering the bow and turning to look at her.

Shepard shrugs, tries to remember why she thought it important she explain where she gets her odd and slightly encyclopedic knowledge of the properties of plants. 

“Didn’t seem important anymore, when my family was gone,” she says honestly after a pause. “And the Alliance saved my life. I figured I might as well give it back to them.” 

Abby’s eyes are her face are kind, understanding, as she nods thoughtfully, and Shepard is immeasurably grateful for what she doesn’t see there: pity.

***

At noon, they’re all sitting around the Williams’ living room once again when Shepard’s omni-tool pings with a message labelled URGENT. She flicks it open.

_Shepard, Joker and Normandy en route to your location. Will arrive at 0800 tomorrow, Amaterasu time. I’ll brief you when you come aboard-ship. Sorry to cut short your shore leave. –Anderson_

Shepard frowns. Odd. She hadn’t expected the Normandy to be up to speed yet, and whatever these orders are, they sound important, if Anderson dispatched the ship before even informing her. 

“Shepard?” Kaidan’s voice interrupts her thoughts. “What is it?”

She forwards the message to his ‘tool and then glances at Ash’s family.

“Looks like we’re going to have to cut this visit a little short,” she says. “New orders. Our ship will be at the docks in the morning.”

Disappointment appears on all three women’s faces. Kaidan closes out of the message and frowns, sending Shepard a puzzled look. She arches a brow and shrugs one shoulder at him.

Mrs. Williams is the first to speak, putting on a cheerful smile. “Well. Orders are orders.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Shepard says, feeling the familiar weight of ‘Commander Shepard’ and not just ‘Shepard’ settle on her shoulders once again. 

***

Shepard doesn’t say much on the ride back to the bed and breakfast that evening. She accepts Mrs. Williams’ offer to give the two of them a ride to the docks come morning, and then follows Kaidan up the stairs to their room silently. She had hoped for more time to figure this thing out, more time to decide what they were going to do, to touch him without prying eyes. None of that will be happening now. They’ll have to…

She hears Kaidan shutting and locking the door behind her and then strong arms wrap around her waist and pull her back against his chest. He brushes his lips over the skin on her neck, just under her ear, and Shepard’s breath catches, her thoughts derailed.

“Botany, huh,” he murmurs into her skin. She blinks, turning in his arms to eye him.

“You heard that?”

He mms, running a hand up the center of her back and reaching for the pins in her long hair. Shepard frowns. 

“You were supposed to be talking to Sarah.”

“I was eavesdropping,” he says without shame, lips curving smugly.

Shepard tries to maintain a stern expression but fails miserably. _He was listening to me_ , she thinks, secretly pleased. _She was flirting with him and he was listening to_ me. 

“All right,” she says, giving him a small smile. “Yeah, botany. So I was a nerdy colonist kid who went around pressing leaves and flowers between the pages of my books of poetry. What of it?”

Kaidan pulls her brown hair free of its bun and tips her chin back. “You are full of surprises,” he says, leaning to kiss her. Shepard closes her eyes and kisses him back, lifting a hand to curl her fingers in the hair on the back of his head, just below his amp. 

“Kaidan,” she says softly, pulling back. “We need to talk about…”

“Later.” He picks her up with his hands under her thighs, carries her the few steps it takes to drop her on the bed. Shepard thinks about protesting, but the stern heat in his whiskey eyes stops her. She knows from experience he doesn’t usually relent when he gets that look. She reaches for the hem of her shirt. 

His paler hands on her brown ones stop her. 

“Let me,” Kaidan murmurs, and Shepard drops her hands to the bedspread on either side of her. 

He undresses her slowly, kneeling on the floor by the foot of the bed. First her shirt, slid off her shoulders and dropped to the floor. He presses kisses along the sharp edge of her collarbone as his fingers work at the clasps on her bra. It joins the shirt, and Kaidan trails his fingers up both arms until he’s cupping her face in his hands hand kissing her, tongue swiping over her lips and inside her mouth. Shepard makes a soft, breathless noise as he pulls away, tugging her head back by the hair so he can kiss down the line of her throat and between her breasts. He moves to take first one nipple, then the other, in his mouth, but briefly, so briefly she groans and reaches for him as he ducks his head away and moves to unlace her boots. 

Boots off, then socks, and his fingers trail over the arches of her feet with deliberate slowness, and then he straightens, reaches for the waistband of her pants. She lets him undo the buttons and zipper, grabbing fistfuls of the blankets, and lifts her hips off the bed so he can drag her pants and underwear down her legs and drop them atop her pile of clothes. Kaidan rubs his hands up her bare thighs and then stands. 

“Lay back,” he says. Shepard swallows and eyes him, but does so silently. Kaidan strips off his own clothes efficiently and crawls up after her, settling himself between her thighs. 

“Now what?” Shepard asks. Her mouth is dry. 

“Hold still,” Kaidan whispers, running his hands up and down her thighs again. This time, it’s a request. “I want to touch you.”

Shepard sighs, drops her head against the pillow, and Kaidan moves up her body, putting his weight on his hands on either side of her. He kisses her forehead, her eyes, the end of her nose. Pausing over the crescent-shaped scar on her right cheek, he glances at her eyes. 

“Mindoir,” Shepard says in answer to the question in his gaze. “I had a disagreement with a branch trying to outrun slavers.”

Kaidan doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look at her sorrowfully or sympathetically, just mouths at the scar and moves on. He kisses her chin and drags his lips over hers all too briefly before starting his way down her body. He finds all the sensitive spots, the ones that make her gasp softly, and these he lingers over. He pauses over each scar he finds, waits for the story. There’s a jagged line just below her left elbow which she tells him was the result of some barbed wire and boot camp, but she refuses to tell him more, her cheeks darkening. On her right knee there’s a nasty chunk of skin missing, the scar white and raised and very old. 

“I had an accident when I was repairing some of my dad’s equipment as a kid,” she says. “Fell right into the blades on the harvester. Cut myself open nearly to the bone. It still creaks weird, sometimes.” 

Kaidan traces the scar with his thumb and smiles, his teeth bright in the half-dark. 

“So, you always been good with tech, then?” 

Shepard chuckles, folding her arms under her head and watching him. She has long since relaxed into the mattress, her body loose and pliant under his mouth and hands. 

“Kinda necessary, for a farmer’s daughter.”

Kaidan hums, resumes his kissing down the curve of her calf to her foot. He kisses each toe and Shepard has to resist the urge to curl them away from the ticklish pressure of his lips. Then he’s back by her head, kissing her again (and again, all too briefly) before he rolls her over onto her stomach. She grumbles but moves easily, pillowing her head on her folded arms again as Kaidan sweeps brown hair off brown shoulders. 

He finds the acid scar down her shoulder and back immediately, runs his fingers lightly over the raised and pocked skin. He’s felt it under his fingertips before, but Shepard isn’t sure he’s actually looked at it yet. She hears his soft intake of breath, notes the ways his fingers brush over this mark even more lightly (if that’s possible) than the others. 

“Akuze,” she murmurs, though she figures it’s obvious.

“They didn’t fix it?” A burn this big, she knows he’s thinking, they should have been able to repair via skin graft, at least make it a little smaller, a little less noticeable, less angry.

“I asked them not to,” Shepard mumbles into her arm. She feels Kaidan skim his knuckles over the scar once more and then his mouth closes on her skin. And this time it’s different, this time there’s an urgency to the way his lips brush over the scar. Shepard stiffens against the mattress when she feels his tongue flick out, feels him lick his way down the overly sensitive area of the burn. She groans loudly, her fingers curling spasmodically in the blankets under her face. Before he can reach the edges of the scar with his mouth, she’s moving under him, rolling them both so she’s on top. She pins his shoulders to the bed and kisses him, desperate, rough, nipping at his bottom lip and thrusting her tongue until his mouth until both his hands come up to tangle in her hair and there’s nothing but the pressure of their lips and their tongues, skin pressed to skin, and Kaidan’s cock trapped hard and leaking pre-come between their bodies.

Shepard lets go of his shoulder to trace her fingers over one thick black eyebrow, and Kaidan moans as the shift rubs the hard planes of her stomach against his cock.

“Cayli…” he sighs, his hands sliding down her back to knead at the cheeks of her ass.

Shepard freezes. “What did you call me?” she whispers, her voice strained.

Kaidan tilts his head, fixing golden-brown eyes on her blue ones, and repeats, “Cayli.”

Shepard inhales raggedly, her eyes wide. Kaidan sits up, pulling her closer, and cups her cheek in his hand.

“What is it, Shepard? Should I not call you that? You say the word and I won’t, okay?”

Shepard wets her lips, looking thoughtful. “My dad used to call me that,” she says, her tone wondering. She laughs, but it’s a strangled sound, real amusement buried by a bitter twist to her lips. “He called me his ‘Cayli-girl.’ Nobody’s called me that in years.”

Kaidan keeps his eyes on her face as Shepard closes her eyes. She’s silent so long he finally says, “Okay. I won’t call you that, then. Caylina.”

“No,” Shepard says, opening her eyes. “You can, if you want to. I don’t mind you calling me Cayli.”

“You’re sure?” Kaidan frowns. “Because I can stop…”

“Say it again,” Shepard interrupts him, reaching out to touch her forefinger to his lips. 

“Cayli,” he says softly as she traces the scar on his lip. She smiles, a fragile smile, but warm and open, so he says it again. “Cayli.”

Shepard kisses him then, snaking hand around to scritch blunt nails gently over the site of his amp. Kaidan shivers. She trails her other hand down the dark hair along his chest and wraps sure fingers around his cock. He thrusts upwards into her grasp the moment she touches him. 

“Oh god, Cayli, yes,” Kaidan groans as she strokes him. He has his eyes fixed on her face, so he sees the way the smile on her face widens. Rising up on her knees, Shepard positions him with her hand and then sinks down until he’s fully seated inside her. She stops to look at him. Whiskey eyes are locked on her near-violet ones, and Kaidan’s mouth is just slightly open. The look on his face – downright worshipful, is what undoes her. She rolls her hips once, experimentally, and then sets a rhythm when Kaidan’s hands rest on her hips and encourage her onward. 

Shepard rocks over him, and Kaidan thrusts up to meet her. His hands are everywhere after that first moment of lingering on her hips; they fondle her breasts, roll her nipples between fingers, slide down her sides, rub at her clit. He murmurs her name, not Shepard or Caylina but _Cayli_ , feels the way her body bucks under his hands every time he calls her that. He pinches her clit between forefinger and thumb, whispers, 

“Come for me, Cayli,” and she does, crying out his name. She clenches round him, head thrown back, and Kaidan thrusts up into her once more and comes too, fingers digging into the skin of her thigh and side so tightly he wonders if there will be a bruise there tomorrow. Caylina goes limp in his arms, shuddering, and Kaidan pulls her down to the bed beside him and pulls out of her. She reaches for him, laces his fingers with hers and pulls their joined hands against her chest. 

“About tomorrow,” Shepard whispers, neither of them sure exactly how much time later. Kaidan rolls onto his side to face her, their positions mirrored. Shepard looks pained. “We can’t do this on the Normandy, Kaidan. Ilos was…Ilos was the exception. There are regs.”

“I know,” he says. “But I’m not letting you go, Shepard. We’ll get this last mission, whatever it is, out of the way, and then we’ll…we’ll file the necessary paperwork and get it sorted.”

“They’re going to send you away,” Shepard says mournfully. She sighs. “Where I won’t get to see you except on shore leave, where I can’t watch your back and keep you safe.”

“Yeah,” Kaidan says, the word heavy on his tongue. There’s no point in denying it. They both know what will happen when the higher-ups find out about their fraternization. They’ll transfer him off the Normandy in a heartbeat.

“I’m sorry.”

Kaidan tightens his fingers around hers. “Don’t be. I’ll do whatever it takes to be with you. Not that I want to leave the Normandy, but…maybe this will be better. In the long run.”

He doesn’t mention Ash, doesn’t say that this emotional attachment clouds both their judgment on the field. He doesn’t have to.

Shepard grunts at his side.

“Well, now that that’s settled, there’s just one problem.”

Kaidan tilts his head. “What?”

“How the hell I’m going to keep my hands off you for the foreseeable future.”

Kaidan laughs, and laughs louder at the disgruntled look on his commander’s face. 

“If that’s the worst of our problems, Cayli,” he murmurs, drawing her closer until she curls up against him and drops her head against his shoulder with a sigh, “I think we’re doing all right.”

Shepard grunts her disagreement but doesn’t say anything. A moment later, he hears her breathing deepen and slow. He presses his lips against her forehead when he’s sure she’s out, and whispers,

“I love you, Shepard.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find more of my ramblings on tumblr, where I am also thecryoftheseagulls.


End file.
